Nothing's Fair in Love and War
by The Green Woman
Summary: The Future: Humans, once having complete control over the world and all it held including the race of demons have fallen from grace. They deserved it. Ashes, unable to die or change, must endure life in what has now become her hell.
1. The Fall

"Watch it," her human fingernails dug into the flesh of his neck. This was the everyday for the demons. They were supposed to be the masters, the top of the chain, but no… Someone, somewhere had slipped, and now this awful world of human dominance had developed.

Religion was long dead, Freud a celebrated historian along with the rest of his theorist buddies. The world was an unpleasant place. The air was gray and a chill wind usually whipped in and out of the buildings. Facts were all powerful, and the wielders of the facts were royalty… So when, through careful examination of DNA and fingerprints, that a race of Vampire-like creatures really did exist, careful measures were taken. Known members were quarantined, others were discovered. Treatment was brutal, until yet another politically correct protest group sprang up and demanded that inhumane testing stop. The arguments were fierce, recalling that these demons ate human flesh for sustenance. Many aspects of history and nature were brought into the picture, and eventually things changed.

Perhaps that was why their race even still existed. It might have died out, had a few stupid humans not interfered. But today, their race was repressed, like slaves. Their treatment today wasn't much better than before… A few rights, such as marriage and reproduction, were given, but all in all, the race was beaten; emotional and physical violence kept them in their place.

The humans grew stupid. They were ignorant to the hatred that the demons kept for them. Their abuse grew worse, and meanwhile, the demons were multiplying, passing their hatred on, and planning for the day when they could become the oppressors.

So when she reached out and took a hold of his neck, intending to make him pay his respects to the higher race, a chain reaction started. He, seizing her wrist, twisted her arm into a nasty angle behind her back. She shrieked with pain and curses. But he wasn't done; a jerk of his own arm snapped her wrist. The crack echoed over the street, silencing anyone who was still making noise.

"Stupid humans." The demon spat the words. The street was filled with screams of fright. Blood spattered from seven different places as the demons, who had gone unnoticed except for a kick or a glob of spittle, ripped their oppressors into pieces. They filled their hunger and their hatred. In one day, power was over turned. The humans simply had no way to stop the Vampire beings.

Ashes, the girl who had sparked it all lived through the torment. Many humans died, but a few still lived. The demons knew that finishing the race would be merciful. Their hatred demanded humiliation. Her name before the take over has been forgotten. She was renamed by Chrys, the ruler, and kept chained by his side for all to see. Every night before he went to sleep, he drank from her blood.

She kept her lips clamped shut as his fangs broke the skin. It was her upper arm today, the place where vaccines were once given. She'd gotten the vaccine, the one to keep her human. That was why Chrys could take her blood every night and still keep her alive. It was pain beyond imagination; nothing like getting blood drawn in a hospital. With every heartbeat, every slight movement either of them made, his teeth grated into her, drinking.

He pulled away and smiled at her. She tried to keep that image of his face, right before she'd hit him, in her mind. That was the last moment where she was the powerful, and he was not; the last moment of her freedom and his misery. His skin had scarred up on the neck, where her fingernails once struck.

He rubbed the scars. "You remember that day?" he asked; like every night before, she shook her head.

"No"

"No?" he said. On a normal night, he'd have gone into the recount of the story, every detail a pinprick in her eyes, till she had tears marching silently down her cheeks. "I remind you every night…" he said. Then, he seized her arm and twisted it up an around to that awkward angle. "Perhaps, if I break your arm again, you'll be able to recall it."

"No, I do," she whispered. She was afraid to speak louder than that. The pain of the last time her arm was like this would never leave her mind.

"You tell me the story, then," said Chrys, falling back and away from her. Ashes watched him crawl into his bed and stretch. "Go on. The humans fall from grace. Tell me the story."


	2. Unexpected Apology

All the hatred she possessed filtered through her mind. She wished she could express that part of the story. Sure… the humans had been stupid; they should have killed out the demons while they had the chance. Now the humans were dying. Stupid stupid stupid.

"You broke my arm," the words jerked from her. "We… humanity… pressed down on your race for so long. We were blind to what should have been the first issue. All of this could have been avoided…" then she added, "all the pain to your kind."

Chrys laughed. He didn't miss the pause. "Your kind started this because they were scared of us. Don't try to placate me… tell me flat out what you think. Go on."

Ashes didn't want to say anything. If she said everything that was going through her thoughts, she could expect to be in agony for months. Chrys was violent, and she was the example. Even words exchanged between the two of them with no one else around would be enough. It was a dance. She had to speak enough of her mind to placate him without releasing his anger. Sometimes she succeeded. Sometimes she spent a few nights trying not to scream and failing.

"My kind was stupid; we reacted to our fears without much thought. Always being taught that reason was better than emotion and belief told us that we ought not to trust your kind. We created the problem. But so will you." These thoughts had been turning over in her head for a few days; that this situation only created more problems.

"You hate me for what my ancestors did. For the only thing I ever knew or was raised to know. And after I am long dead, and the children of my race sit in my shoes, they will hate you. How long before you fall the same way I did?" she said. He thought about this. Her compromise had worked, thanks to the way she kept the real hatred she felt out of her voice. She still believed in all those things that she had been raised under. She still believed that he ought to be chained and she ought to be the one sleeping in a comfortable bed. After months of abuse, both physical and emotional, she learned to keep her thoughts to herself. She learned to compromise and she learned how to use truth to disguise lies.

"What makes you think," venom was seeping into the words. "That ANY of your kind will survive long," said Chrys.

"What good is hatred if you don't have anyone to act against?" She replied.

"True." Rising from the bed where he'd made himself quite comfortable, he went to her. It was over in a few seconds, Ashes cowering on the floor, trying to protect herself from his blows. He kicked her again for good measure, and returned to bed, flicking the light-switch on the way, so that blackness descended.

Being the example was boring, Ashes decided the next day. What else was their to do when Chrys was busy. Ruling a race wasn't just some joker position. She learned a lot about the flaws in the various governmental systems just by coming here. They might think her dumb and fragile, but she knew how to listen. There was no other way to occupy her time. Many of his meetings were private, nowadays for just that reason.

She learned in the time before this that the humans reign over the demons was characterized by fact and reason. Of course, fact had its place, and the demons would never throw it out entirely, but the system they were putting in place gave emotions their power too. Emotion was a motivator, a satisfier and they intended to collect those. She also learned a bit of the way a demon's hunger worked. These were the things that she never bothered with in her old life because in her old life, demons didn't matter. A demon didn't necessarily have to eat human flesh. Animals would work. Raw meat was especially enjoyed, but they could cook it as well. Going without food would kill them in a similar way to how it killed humans. Many of Chrys' politics involved how to feed his kind. The debates were between those who wanted to raise humans as livestock, and those who argued that doing so would end in disaster, the humans one day realizing that they could be in power as well.

Ashes was more than interested by these debates. She wanted to contribute, but she was realizing day by day how little she knew of the world she was living in. It was this concept that led her to ask a question one evening. The day had been one of her more boring experiences. Her bruises had all but healed from her last attack, and the violent responses seemed to be losing their appeal.

"I'm not a nice person?" she said to Chrys. He was surprised. He'd gone through his bedtime routine, the two of them talking about the downfall of humanity, and watching her cry. He was about to drift into sleep when her voice whispered the question. She could hardly believe she was saying this, after everything he'd done to her, shouldn't she hate him; shouldn't he be the one feeling like a terrible person? Even he had to think about it.

"You weren't." Chrys said. "You did awful things to my kind because we're different; because you were scared of us." He almost added that it wasn't her fault, she didn't know any better. But he didn't really believe that. The words that followed were automatic for her. She'd been trying to find a way to say it for along time. Not because she was scared for her life or her race, though that might have played a small factor. Viewing it from the other end of the spectrum, she could see things that she would never notice from anywhere else.

"I… Tha-… … Sorry." She tried to be sincere, but to her ears, it sounded choppy and nervous. To his ears, those were the things that made it real. It wasn't rehearsed. It wasn't just the words.


	3. The Bath

{{This is just a quick note: Demons = vampires. They're the same race, just to clear up any confusion.}}

"This is the same thing that brought the humans down, made them weaker." Chrys growled. He was eating breakfast, a huge roasted pork. It was hard not to look at his feet, Ashes thought.

She knelt at the end of the table, head bowed just enough to appease, and stole glances at the Demons. Each had his or her own pig in front of them. She also knew that by the end of the meal, not a crumb would lay on the plates, not even the bones of the animal.

"We must discuss our moves before we make them, young Chrys. You are powerful, strong and intelligent, but impatient none the less. We can't just go charging into places where we suspect meat is being horded, or humans escaping. We have to plan carefully to avoid offending our people." It was an older vampire who spoke out, sitting a few seats down.

"I care not for this careful dance of intrigue and spying and bullshit. The lies will be more offensive than if we just went after what we wanted outright. Why complicate things into a web of chaos. Its too easy for things to get tangled and torn and just messy. I won't stand for it! Tomorrow, we start the plans for invasion of the southwest."

Ashes stopped listening. She didn't want to hear about the tactical movements of the Demons any more than she wanted to hear what they would do to the humans they found who had escaped the slavery they were now held in. She even wished to be one of them, strong enough to defy the will of their evil masters and plan a road to freedom.

She was a wimp and she knew it. On her knees at the and of the table, waiting for her masters call and doing everything she could to placate him, to keep him happy and his anger away from her. She knew the penalty for those who dared try for freedom would be gruesome and extreme. They would become the first of the examples. Like her.

"Ashes, come. I grow tired of the old fools." Chrys shoved his plate away from himself and stood up. She rose too, keeping her eyes on her bare toes, and walking away behind him. He was in a fury, she could tell.

"I'm in charge of this place. I am. Councils and voting and asking permission from every old geezer will slow us down, weaken the power that this system has."

Since he wasn't technically addressing her, she decided to remain silent. The path he took was winding them closer to the bath house, and she knew what that meant. Soaking in hot water, the luxury of it. This was the one place that Ashes received a luxury rather than a punishment of being a pet to the Demon in charge.

The door to the room was leaking steam, as always, and she followed Chrys through the door. There was a female demon soaking at the other end of the bath, steam licking the sides of her body. Ashes tried not to stare. She was beautiful in a very human way. Chrys noticed too, but didn't approach her. He stripped and walked into the water, drawing in breath when it met his skin.

Ashes followed suit, trying not to be embarrassed. She had scars on her arms, her back. There was also a fading purple-orange oval on her belly from the last time she'd made a Demon mad. It hadn't been Chrys. She'd bumped into someone in the hall trying to keep up with her master and that Demon, in his anger, had lashed out.

Chrys sat on one of the many benches and submerged all but his eyes. He could sit that way for a long time, neither needing nor wanting to draw breath. Ashes took her time, floating on her back in the steaming water, waiting for her master's call.

It felt like forever in the hot water, and she soaked until her aches were just a memory, gone in the distance and the steam.

"Ashes," Chrys called. All the aches came back, and she waded over to where he was. One of the attendants had brought a towel and several soaps over. She washed his hair, his body, rubbed soap into all the grime that stuck to him. He went underwater to rinse, then they repeated, him with his eyes closed, making sounds that turned Ashes' cheeks red.

After they were both dry and redressed in fresh linens, he went back to the politics. Ashes went behind him with her head bowed, hair falling down her back in wet tendrils.


End file.
